MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Sitting in the crowded weight room in the West Virginia Coliseum shortly after his team had soundly beaten Syracuse, West Virginia forward Wellington Smith was asked if his squad approached playing Syracuse differently because of the Orange’s inexperience.

Smith, just a sophomore himself, smiled a bit before answering.

‘You know, (WVU assistant coach Billy Hahn) said to us before the game, ‘You’re playing three freshmen, a sophomore and a junior [sic],” Smith recalled, ”You’d better not lose.”

Hahn made the statement tongue-in-cheek, but it certainly provides a glimpse into where the Orange sits on the Big East totem pole.

The Mountaineers are a good team, but far from world-beaters. Yet a loss to this Syracuse team at home would have represented an affront to their pride.

In a literal sense, SU is in a four-way tie for eighth place with a 2-2 record in the nation’s most crowded conference.

Yet, in a figurative light, it appears Syracuse is far removed from the young, flashy side that some hoped would take the conference by storm, the team that figured to ensure the Orange’s return to the sacred institution of March Madness.

That goal seems far from a lock now. Indeed, it has to be said this squad is faced with a tough road to even make the NCAA Tournament.Now before we go any further, nobody is saying they can’t make it to March. Nobody has ever denied the talent on this team. The post-game press conferences of opposing coaches are quite often littered with glowing praise for the SU youngsters.

But to expect a team using a seven-player rotation with four freshmen to safely secure a Tourney bid? That’s asking a lot from an Orange group that’s looked all too green several times this season.

Of course, much of that inexperience is by circumstance. No one could have guessed two of SU’s top scorers, first Andy Rautins and then Eric Devendorf, would be shelved for the season with torn ACLs. Few could have thought the team’s lone senior, Josh Wright, would have gone AWOL before conference play even began.

With those players, the team might look different. Maybe Devendorf or Wright wouldn’t have crumpled under the relentless pressure West Virginia applied on Sunday.

Instead, it will be Jonny Flynn and Scoop Jardine playing close to 40 minutes each night, and as they continue to adjust there will inevitably be performances like Sunday.

‘Scoop was not sure what he was doing,’ Boeheim admitted after Sunday’s loss. ‘Jonny got caught up in the overplay, tried to force the issue.’

But this isn’t a reaction to just these two games. This team has shown its inconsistencies all year. It showed when SU couldn’t get a stop down the stretch in losses to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It also showed when the Orange couldn’t score enough to stay in the game early against two Big East teams it will likely be battling for Tournament bids.

Remember, these first five games were supposed to be the easy stretch of SU’s Big East gauntlet.

Realistically, Syracuse likely needs to finish at least 9-9 in the Big East to have a legitimate claim to a Tournament bid. Admittedly, there are too many games left to start scrolling through the schedule and delegating wins and losses, but it’s a safe bet Syracuse will be underdogs in no less than seven of those games.

When asked if the Orange were at a pivotal point in the season after two disappointing losses, Flynn seemed at ease.

‘We got a lot more games left,’ Flynn said. ‘If this was toward the end of the season, I would start to tense up, like ‘Come on fellas let’s bring this together.’ … We got a lot of time to turn this around and we will turn it around.’

Indeed, the outlook for Syracuse could grow a lot rosier very quickly (consecutive home wins against Rutgers and Villanova would do the trick). For this youthful group to make the tournament would be a tremendous accomplishment, but as it stands, you’d have to say the chips are stacked against them.

That doesn’t mean they won’t do it, but until Syracuse is able to string some quality wins together, it’s unreasonable to expect this group to make this Selection Sunday any sweeter than last year.

John Clayton is an assistant sports editor at The Daily Orange where his columns appear occasionally. He can be reached at jsclayto@gmail.com.

Published on January 14, 2008 at 12:00 pm